Current Location: Hanoi, Vietnam
(Many thanks to everybody who has helped me out with introductions to their friends in countries along my way, meeting so many great new people has been one of the best things of the whole journey… if anybody happens to have friends in Yunnan/Kunming (China), Tibet, Nepal, North India or Pakistan who I could maybe meet as I am passing through, I would be very grateful if you could drop me an email. Thank you).
If you are not familiar with the geography of South East Asia, please do take a look at the map below to see how this fascinating jigsaw of countries fit together.
“There is pain that is perceived and there is pain that is endured and they are two different worlds, inhabited by creatures of two different races. We cannot choose which one we belong toâ€? – John Le Carre“Does not the most enlightened philosophy teach us to mistrust man? The optimal being, the supreme creature, the natural aristocrat of the living world? Man who – when, exceptionally he becomes his true self – can bring about excellence, yet also bring about the worst. A slayer of monsters, and forever a monster himself.â€? – Francois Bizot (the only westerner to survive being interrogated by the Khmer Rouge)
“The Vietnam war has amply demonstrated how easily modern man and the modern civilization with all its claims of civility – can relapse into barbarism in the course of pursuing belligerent objectives in a distant land where neither national territory nor national security is tangibly at stake… the general line of official policy established a moral climate in which the welfare of Vietnamese civilians was totally disregarded�
-Faulk, quoted in Maclear (The ten thousand day war)
It has been a fast and exhausting ride from Singapore to Northern Vietnam – 6 countries and 4 capital cities. 11 punctures, 1 new front wheel, a lot of sweating, and a lot of hours on the vast stretches of desperately loud, fume drenched motorways.My Southeast Asian ride began in early November the day after Christine had flown back to London, as I set off from Singapore to Malaysia. I had various deadlines to meet in the next two months, so I headed north as fast as I could up the busy highways – pedaling past industrial towns and steaming Palm Oil plantations.
After three days on the road I had made it to Kuala Lumpur (the Capital of Malaysia) where I took a short, pleasant break staying with Ian de Villiers (the director of the Viva Network’s Asia Office). Viva Network is the charity which I have been supporting whilst on this bicycle ride and I am pleased to say that (with your generous help) over 14,000 GBP has now been raised towards their outstanding work on behalf of children at risk. I am hoping to raise over 20,000 GBP before I get home in 10 months time. The money raised for Viva Network is used by them to equip, encourage and network thousands of children at risk projects around the world – and I have been increasingly convinced that their work to enhance the collaboration between existing charities will result in many more children receiving much better help.
A few days later and I was off again. Leaving the glistening twin Petronas Towers of KL on the horizon behind me, I continuing up the coast past the old British Trade Post of Georgetown and over the border into Thailand. The next 1200 km blurred by in a week of sweaty sunshine and drenching thunderstorms – and at last I was in Bangkok. In Bangkok I finally managed to get the bike fixed (my front wheel’s rim had a 10 cm split along it), gave talks at a few International Schools and then on my 30th birthday I was back on the road – overtaking elephants and heading once more into the Thai countryside.
I was now riding for the Kingdom of Cambodia – where abruptly and bone crunchingly, the roads turned from smooth tarmac highway to dusty brown assault course. Cars would overtake me in a frenzy of horn hooting and leave me literally enveloped in the dust clouds they threw up. After two days of slow persevering, I eventually got to the tourist town of Siem Reap – situated on the edge of the great ruined city of Angkor Watt. This is a complex of breathtakingly stunning temples which was abandoned in the 15th century and subsequently almost completely lost in the ever growing jungle. It was perplexing to think of how this magnificently exuberant civilization must have seemed eternal and unbreakable at its peak 800 years ago – but that in the end it had proved so impermanent – its corridors of royalty and power nowadays filled with over a million camera toting foreigners a year. 
Apart from these great ruins reminding us of times long gone, the other thing with which Cambodia is often associated is the unbearable genocide that the Khmer Rouge regime perpetrated on its own people in the 1970s. It is estimated that they murdered 2 million people (one quarter of the population) during their brief time in power. This of course means that any one I met of my age or older would have been through the horrors themselves. On my first night in the country I was invited to stay in a small church where the Cambodian pastor told me his heartbreaking story. He was nine years old when the Khmer Rouge took power and they soon forcibly separated him from his parents and sent him to work (12 hours a day) on a farm. When he grew older (by which time the Vietnamese had invaded the country) he was sent to work as a timber man in the forest. However, as he knew the extreme danger of this posting (due to endemic landmines and malaria) he instead decided to attempt an escape across the border to Thailand. He set off on this journey with a dozen other friends, but due to landmines, disease, starvation, and being shot, less than half of them made it across the frontline to safety. (Along the way he had the first of several supernatural experiences which eventually led to his conversion to Christianity and his subsequent calling to spread the message of forgiveness, reconciliation and hope in his own country). His suffering was not yet over however, as when he returned to Cambodia and his home village years later he was to find out from a neighbour that both his parents and all 7 siblings had been executed by the Khmer rouge (by having their necks broken as there was not enough ammunition for firing squads).
There must be countless stories of such unbearable tragedy in Cambodia. During my bike ride I have had cause to shudder as I passed through several other sites of horror – the Gulag valleys of Siberia (3 million prisoners perished), the Peace Park of Nagasaki (100,000 Japanese civilians killed), or the Memorial Museum of Nanjing (over 100,000 Chinese civilians massacred in WW II), but what set Cambodia aside was the realization that all this evil was perpetrated in my own lifetime.
On a more positive note, although Cambodia is still desperately poor (it is the only country in which I have ever seen wooden-wheeled wagons), it seems the Cambodians are determined to put their past behind them. The country is full of hard working, smiling faces, and the tourists are now bringing in welcome foreign currency.
I only had time for a brief 5 days in Cambodia and then had to cut north on the back roads back into Thailand and take a boat ride across the Mekong River into Laos. I pedaled across the cool, windy plateau in just 2 days (spending one interesting night sharing a mosquito net with motorcycle mechanic in his village), and was soon rolling off the border mountains and into Vietnam.
It is impossible to travel through Vietnam without thinking of the war with America. It seems that the Americans entered this war believing that it was their responsibility to defend South Vietnam from Communist aggression (and bearing in mind the utter inhumanity of most communist regimes at the time, I guess that this was commendable intention?). More importantly, the Americans also believed that if South Vietnam fell, there could then be a domino effect throughout Southeast Asia – with all the other countries also falling to Chinese backed communism. However, the war the Americans fought was both ineffective and indiscriminate – especially in their use of bombs which killed many thousands of civilians. In retrospect though, the greatest tragedy seems to be that the war need not have been fought – the actual reason for going to war was a total misjudgment in the first place. Most historians now conclude that the fear of Communist aggression was rather unfounded as was the “dominoâ€? theory. Although Communism was very important to Ho Chi Min (the leader of North Vietnam), the real issue was more to do with wanting to unite and gain complete independence for Vietnam from foreigners. It had far less to do with spreading communism.
The sorrow of war is all the greater when we admit that a war should not really be being fought at all.
I came up Vietnam’s coast at quite a pace, sharing a road with the loudest truck horns I have ever experienced (they would have been more suitable for container ships), and the sound of these ricocheting through my brain, plus the ceaseless yelling (at high volume) of every man and child “hello� as I pedaled past them, plus a head wind, plus I was feeling a bit ill, plus the fact I had had only five proper conversations in English in the past 2 weeks – combined to almost persuade me I was losing my mind!I only had time for a brief 5 days in Cambodia and then had to cut north on the back roads back into Thailand and take a boat ride across the Mekong River into Laos. I pedaled across the cool, windy plateau in just 2 days (spending one interesting night sharing a mosquito net with motorcycle mechanic in his village), and was soon rolling off the border mountains and into Vietnam.
Thankfully, I managed to stay on schedule, and arrived in Hanoi on Christmas day in time to join a thousand worshippers in the old Catholic Cathedral for carols and prayer. Two days off and I was feeling much better and extremely happy to be able to catch a cheap flight to Hong Kong to meet Christine for a week’s holiday (she was home from London for a two week break). It was very good to see her again, and just take a total break from the ride, and I was grateful for some good resting time and time with her… but then (as seems to be the routine) we had to part, and I am now back in Hanoi with an extremely heavy bike, preparing to go north again, and back into the cold – trespassing onto the roof of the world in winter in Tibet. If the snow does not delay me too much, I hope to reach Lhasa by the end of February.
As always, many thanks for your emails, prayers and kind donations to Viva Network.
Happy 2007 and God bless
Rob
If you would like to donate to Viva Network’s work with children at risk, please visit www.justgiving.com/cyclinghomefromsiberia